A day in the life of UX’er Heleen

Garage
Garage
Sep 7, 2018 · 5 min read

Ever wondered what a UXer does everyday? Heleen can tell you!

First of all: A UXer is someone who’s all about User Experience and helps making (digital or physical) products useful, easy to use and delightful to interact with. It’s about enhancing the experience that people have while interacting with a product, and making sure they find value in the product you want to provide.

So, who is Heleen?

This smart lady has been working with us since November 2017. She’s keen on organizing and giving structure to the biggest puzzles of information to create the best user experience. Besides, she has a great interest in effective content and personalization of design. In her spare time she loves going to the gym and blogging about her vegan and green lifestyle. You will probably notice her love for food in this little diary.

Breakfast!

07:30h: Time for a brekkie

“Time to wake up! Everyone knows that — if you want to be productive that day — your day has to start off with a lovely breakfast. This is porridge with banana, lovely! Once it’s finished, it’s time to ride my bike to the office.”

On the way to the Garage

08:40h: My bike ride through Vondelpark
I love my morning bike ride to work, because it wakes me up and is a relaxing moment for myself. Today the weather is amazing as well, so the ride is even nicer.”

Hi there!

09:00h: Hello office!

“First things first: Coffee. This is another passion of mine. I would love to become a better barista. Unfortunately, we have to wait a little for a great espresso machine since we just moved to our new office and work in a temporary studio now. Still enjoying my soy cappuccino whilst riding the elevator to the 3rd floor though.”

09:15h: War room

“This is the first day of a new project! To efficiently work together the team and I lock ourselves in our war room. Here we brainstorm, sketch, design and often have intense discussions. I can’t share a lot about this project, but in short: It’s a pressure cooking project focusing on a new website for an energy provider. Within this project I am the UX Lead and it’s my job to combine user and business needs and translate these to the suitable content, functionalities and flows. All with the aim to create the best (digital) solution and product for our users and businesses. The project is really exciting but we do have to create a lot in a short period of time. I’m in for a challenge though!”

Vegan of course!

12:00h: Lunch time

“Our new office has some really nice outside space to enjoy lunch. Since the weather is amazing we decide to have lunch outside in the sun. Today’s menu is a hummus and tomato sandwich, but I often go wild with a homemade salad. I always love sitting with my colleagues — catching up without talking about work too much.”

Epicenter ind Amsterdam

13:00h: Some internal tasks
“I’m on my way to a meeting. The Garage is a young start-up, so we still have to map out a lot of internal processes to create more structure. As a UXer I can design processes as well, so I started helping with our organization structure. This is also one of the reasons I joined the Garage. It’s really cool to contribute to setting-up a company. Today’s topic is our work flow and how to improve it. The past year has given us a lot of insights in what to improve and how to do it differently.”

Time for (n)ice cream

15:15h: Ice ice baby

One of our Garage values is to enjoy life besides working. Let’s take a small break and get some ice cream. It’s about a 5 minute walk to a really nice ice cream shop nearby. Mango and chocolate sorbet please!”

Collaboration is key

15:45h: Sketching
“It is time to continue the project we’ve started in the morning in our war room. To challenge our creativity we set a timer for a few minutes and sketch as many interface directions as possible. This way we can ideate different solutions for our product. Based on the value proposition, design principles, user and business needs we can decide what ideas might be interesting to explore in more detail.”

Time to go home

17:30h: Let’s call it a day

Time to say all my lovely colleagues goodbye and hop on my bike to enjoy the Vondelpark again. I dump my stuff at home and head to the gym. This was a productive day!”

“Not every working day looks like this one of course, every day is totally different. That’s what I like the most about this job: The diversity in tasks I have.”

Would you like to work with Heleen? Send us a message!

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